I had dinner with my friend N the other day, and we hit a drugstore on the way home to feed our little obsession. (Okay, I did and she came along.) Towards the end I said, “Okay, pick something for me.” And then, to avoid the embarassment of spending 15 minutes saying “Already got that one… and that one…”, I added, “Pick something you don’t think I’d pick for myself.”

Yeah, I would not have picked it! I actually think it’s pretty flattering on me (?), but I’m not really a FLAMING ORCHID kind of person, and this is bright. Nonetheless, I love it when people pick polishes for me, either to wear or to buy; it’s astonishing how often it’s a complete learning experience. (Black on one hand and white on the other, chosen by a labmate, was so good that I want a matching dress.)*

If you don’t know, Pantone** has always had some geek love, and they’ve realized it and decided to make a profit off it – you can buy notebooks, watches, mugs, etc. One of the things they do now is declare a “Color of the Year” (and season), which cosmetics, clothing designers, etc. dutifully note.†

* If you have an idea (that you tell me) I will do it to my nails if physically possible, and post it. This is a promise. It can also be a dare, that’s fine.

** A company whose business is “reproducible color.” You can buy physical swatches of thousands of colors, and the Pantone color number is just… that color. That exact color. No monitor differences, differences between batches, or creep: Pantone 13-1406 (“Cloud Pink”) willalways be the same. For example, the University of Tennessee’s official colors are UT Orange, White, and Smokey, while the University of Texas’ orange is Burnt Orange (#159). You can see where that’s useful when thousands of people and hundreds of departments are doing their own thing.

† Update: apparently they also look at runway shows and early collections to get ideas, so it goes both ways. *shrug*